Winner of the NESUG Giveaway!

Ron Foti is the winner of the NESUG giveaway. Congratulations, Ron! We will look forward to hearing about your experience in Portland, Maine.

GVSUG Summer Picnic

Approximately 30 members, family, and friends attended the picnic at Ellison Park and had a great time. Take a look at the GVSUG Picnic Photo Album

Thank You

The GVSUG executive committee would like to thank Howard Proskin of Howard M. Proskin & Associates, Inc. for hosting the most recent executive board meeting.

Letter from the Chairperson of the Executive Committee

(From an August 8, 2005 email)
Hi everyone,

I am writing to you this evening with news and notes regarding the latest on what’s happening with GVSUG. My first order of business is the consolidation of any and all e-mail lists. If you are receiving this, it is because at some point you provided us with your e-mail address, either at a meeting, through survey results, or some other means. If you no longer wish to be on this e-mail list, please reply to me (not to ALL) and let me know. On the other hand, if you know someone who did not receive this e-mail and would like to be added to the list, please let me know or forward this to them and they can let me know.

My name is Mike Molter and I am the new chair person of the GVSUG executive committee. For those of you who don’t know, our former chair, Paige Miller, had to resign his position for personal reasons. On behalf of myself and those of us on the Executive Committee that worked with him closely, we wish him well. With that said, my first order of business is to open up a communication line with all current members. To do that, as I stated above, I wanted to update and consolidate whatever e-mail lists were available. Assuming that I stay in this position for a while, I would like to use this as well as the website as a regular mode of communication, letting you know about upcoming events such as meetings, regional and international conferences (NESUG and SUGI e.g.), social events, etc, what kinds of things are going on with the executive committee, and whatever else may come to mind. Please feel free to respond to anything you receive in this manner.

The executive committee recently met to discuss things that need to get done and how responsibilities would be distributed in Paige’s absence. First and foremost is the planning of our next general meeting. Nothing is set in stone yet, but here are some things we have in mind.

Our tentative date has been set for Wednesday, October 26 at our tentative place, the Brighton library. I have been in touch with SAS Institute to bring in a speaker on the topic of PROC REPORT. I have not yet heard back. We will let you know as soon as we find out more.

We also have two slots open for contributed talks from you. Each of these should last no longer than 30 minutes, but can be short too. It doesn’t have to be anything real formal – we don’t require a paper to be written and in fact the format in which you deliver is up to you. You can do a traditional style presentation, you can present with a partner, you can even make it interactive if you’re confident you can get the audience involved. One thing I can’t stress enough is the following: please don’t feel you have to change the world with your topic. If you’ve ever explained to a colleague how something worked, then you probably have the contents of a talk that many of us would find useful. Same goes if you have multiple uses for a particular technique or function or PROC. If you’re interested, please visit our website (www.gvsug.org) and submit a brief abstract. We only have room for about 45 minutes to an hour worth of contributed talks, but if we don’t select yours, we may contact you to present at the next meeting.

One other order of business for our next meeting is the annual elections for the executive committee. As I mentioned, I have taken over for Paige for the chair position, but come October, all positions are open. Currently, there is a position for Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer, Webmaster, and six at-large positions. Many of us currently on the committee will be running again, but any of you are welcome to nominate yourselves for any position. If you’re interested, please reply to me and let me know what position you are interested in, and your name will be on the ballot at the next meeting.

We also discussed the results of the recent survey. For the most part, people preferred semi-annual (twice a year) meetings, each to be held during the week at about 3:00 as we have always done. Most were in favor of meeting lengths between 2.5 and 3 hours with one longer talk and a couple of short ones. A couple of new ideas that people were in favor of were occasional theme meetings, full day SAS training in conjunction with a GVSUG meeting, and combining networking sessions with icebreakers. Many good suggestions were offered too. The committee will be working on incorporating some of these new ideas at future meetings.

Just remember –

• if someone didn’t get this who should have, please forward it to them,

• consider submitting an abstract,

• consider nominating yourself for a position on the executive committee,

• visit gvsug.org for more information, job postings, and other good stuff,

• if you have any questions regarding your membership status and whether your dues are up to date, please let me know and I will check with our treasurer, Marla Miller.

Mike Molter